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The Constituent Assembly is suspended for a month

Bolpress, September 8

The president of the assembly, Silvia Lazarte reported on Friday that the directorate of the Constituent Assembly had decided to suspend plenary sessions for a month until social tensions in the capital calmed down and social leaders from Chuquisaca and La Paz overcame differences over the seat of the executive and legislative powers. Lazarte made the announcement in Cochabamba, anticipating that the reaction would have been counterproductive if the information was released in Sucre where the media is hostile. She denounced that far right groups from the Cruceñista Youth Union were in the capital with the aim of provoking violence. Groups of university students attempted to take by force the Gran Mariscal Theatre on various occasions.

The city of Sucre, where the assembly delegates are deliberating, has lived through 20 days of mobilization and hunger strikes led by the civic leadership of the department. The social convulsion has pushed some of the delegates from La Paz to declare themselves clandestine, such as the fourth vice president of the assembly, Angel Villacorta (National Unity, UN), fearing attacks and persecution.

Some of the press has accused the Morales government of promoting confrontation and seeking deaths because it has convoked a social summit of campesinos and indigenous peoples aligned with MAS for Monday, September 10, in Sucre, an encounter that is expected to bring together no less than 20,000 people. That same day has also been set as the deadline for ultimatum launched by the Democratic Junta of Bolivia, which brings together the most conservative political sectors, for the Constituent Assembly to annul the resolution passed on August 15, removing from official discussions the debate over shifting the executive and legislative powers from La Paz and Sucre.

This Friday, for the second time, dialogue over the issue of the capital convoked by the government failed, after civic leaders from Chuquisaca opposed debating the issue outside of Sucre. Some representatives of La Paz also did not participate in this second encounter in Potosi, and announced that they would not go to Sucre, in protest over the intransigency of their colleagues from Chuquisaca who are involved in a conspiratorial plan. “We are in front of an escalation [of this plan], which is tied to the prefects and the committees of the half moon (right wing), there is an anti-democratic conspiracy in march”, denounced the mayor of La Paz, Juan Del Granado.

The executive will make a third attempt and has called for a table of dialogue to be set up in any province in the department of Chuquisaca, in light of the fact that Sucre can not offer guarantees for a frank, and above all safe, discussion. “In Sucre, there is a climate of belligerence, of racism, discrimination and an attitude of provocation against the social organizations and the companeros from the countryside, and we can not initiate negotiations in this environment”, said the Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana.

Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said that the radical and fascist right wing was wagering, in a rabid form, on the closure of the assembly and in order to achieve this it was manipulating regional sentiments.